Italians Take Up The Torch To Ignite Their Own Tech Startup Scene

Last year Italy?s official statistics bureau, ISTAT, produced a report on the state of the internet in Italy. It found that in world terms, Italy was below average in terms of Internet usage. The European average is 73% usage by population, but Italians were hovering around the 63% mark. But official statistics can be cruel and out of date - and it's clear now to any observer on the ground that whatever is happening in the home market, Italian tech startups aren't just shooting for their own country but for yours as well. Evidence of this emerged when Facebook bought Italy-based Glancee, this year - this was the location based mobile story of the year. And there have been other undercurrents. The Italian Startup Scene Facebook Group which now has over 8,300 members, up from less than 3,000 last year - is still growing. Clearly many of the old attitudes are changing fast, and are probably out of date as we speak. For instance, the TechCrunch Italy CrunchUp event in Rome this last week was originally supposed to be a simple meetup. But it's a sign that Italy's startup eco-system has exploded in the last 18 months or so that we ended up having to find a venue for over 1,000 people who wanted to come. Italy has clearly changed since I scratched around a tiny Italian-only event in 2008.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/6iwxtB18iMg/

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